Somewhere off Deimos Science fiction book artwork illustration

I’ve been working on a space illustration for the top back of a science fiction novel. This is one of the “exercises” I did to develop a faster way to create both planets as well as the detail on a spaceship to make it look more like the surface of something that might have been in space a while, and perhaps cobbled together and repaired in a haphazard way over time.

In this case, we’re somewhere off Deimos.

Realistic moon pictures are tricky for science fiction book illustrators because there’s no atmosphere to give visual cues of distance. That means things have to be set up so the viewer “sees” things at the size they’re expecting from all the sci-fi movies as well as NASA pictures and such that comprise the viewer’s “experiences” in space. But things are tricky at best and when the picture includes a small moon like Deimos, there’s really no way to properly offer a visual cue. At least not until we become aware of this tiny moon’s relative size and positioning to Mars — and approaching space ships.

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When not piloting spaceships off Deimos, Duncan Long paints magazine and book illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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